For as long as I’ve been offering professional counseling and sharing my thoughts as a writer, I’ve celebrated and acknowledged the value and power of hope. In both my personal and professional life, I’ve witnessed hope do incredible things and play pivotal roles in people’s lives. If it weren’t for the existence of hope, many of those precious dreams, accomplishments and goals we strive for would elude us.

Hope is one of the primary ingredients in the formula for success. It is hope that often provides us with the drive we need to carry on even when faced with serious doubt, adversity or resistance. As I’ve said before, I see hope as motivation’s fuel because, without it, motivation is starved out of existence, just as a lack of oxygen will snuff out a fire.

I actually consider myself one of hope’s biggest fans, and that’s precisely why it somewhat pains me to write this article today. As positive and helpful as hope can be, there’s also a serious downside when hope is misdirected.

I decided to write about this after seeing a comment from one of my readers. She was lamenting the fact that her live-in boyfriend of 10 years wasn’t turning out to be the responsible and supportive man that she had hoped he would be. Even though he constantly promised he would man-up, he never followed through or kept a job for more than a day. As a result, she felt emotionally distraught, used and betrayed.

What kept this woman attached to this man for 10 long years was the hope that he would change. When I said earlier that hope had a downside, this is what I was referring to. Hope, as wonderful and inspirational as it may be, can also turn into a type of mental quicksand that keeps you stuck while sucking the very life out of you.

Some people say you should never give up hope and, depending on the circumstances, I tend to agree. However, there are also times when hope becomes a numbing and addictive mental narcotic of sorts. Take the woman in the example above. While there’s a chance that after 10 years this man will change, should she spend the rest of her life waiting for that possibility?

There seems to be two kinds of hope; honest hope and false hope. The example above is an illustration of false hope, just like the woman who’s regularly abused by her husband, but consistently takes him back because he swears it won’t happen again. In most cases, this turns out to be false hope. And it’s often accompanied by devastating or lethal consequences.

My mission today is to move you to examine the hope that drives your behavior and challenge the reality of that hope. Sometimes it’s difficult to identify the difference between honest hope and false hope, but if you objectively consider it, it’s not impossible to decipher.

False hope often becomes a tenacious trap that keeps you stuck, blinds you from the truth and robs you of your future.

Someone who knows the limits of hope and can see the folly and futility of embracing false hope is what I refer to as a realistic thinker. The realistic thinker is a problem confronter, information gatherer, clear thinker and solution finder who lives in the real world! The Pollyanna thinker maintains their false hope even in the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary.

Even though hope is a powerful force that can deliver incredible results, false hope can also act as a blindfold that deceives you and an anchor that prevents you from moving forward.